Kurzbeschreibung

An influential columnist from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz presents a groundbreaking examination of Israel that traces the events that led the country to its current state of conflict through the stories of everyday citizens to illuminate the importance of lesser-known historical events.

Beschreibung

Die große Geschichte Israels

Der renommierte Journalist Ari Shavit sieht Israel in einer halt- und ausweglosen Lage: als jüdisch-westlicher Staat in einer arabisch-islamischen (Um-)Welt seit seiner Gründung in der Existenz bedroht, andererseits Okkupationsmacht über ein anderes, das palästinensische Volk. Der Innovationskraft und Lebensfreude seiner Menschen stehen ein bröckelndes Gemeinwesen, zermürbende Konflikte, militärische Scheinerfolge und der Verlust internationalen Ansehens gegenüber. Was als gemeinschaftlicher hoffnungsfroher Aufbruch begann, insbesondere nach den Schrecken des Holocausts, der gemeinsame Bau von Eretz Israel, ist heute allgemeiner Desillusion und Desintegration gewichen. Shavit erzählt, zunächst auf den Spuren seines zionistischen Urgroßvaters, eine sehr persönliche Geschichte Israels während der letzten anderthalb Jahrhunderte, von Erfolgen im steten Überlebenskampf, aber auch von schuldbehafteter Tragik und unübersehbarem Niedergang. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE ECONOMIST

Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today

Not since Thomas L. Friedman's groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land . Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Ari Shavit draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters, as well as his own family's story, illuminating the pivotal moments of the Zionist century to tell a riveting narrative that is larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and national, both deeply human and of profound historical dimension.

We meet Shavit's great-grandfather, a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people; the idealist young farmer who bought land from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s to grow the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine's booming economy; the visionary youth group leader who, in the 1940s, transformed Masada from the neglected ruins of an extremist sect into a powerful symbol for Zionism; the Palestinian who as a young man in 1948 was driven with his family from his home during the expulsion from Lydda; the immigrant orphans of Europe's Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the pragmatic engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel's nuclear program in the 1960s, in the only interview he ever gave; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; the dot-com entrepreneurs and young men and women behind Tel-Aviv's booming club scene; and today's architects of Israel's foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms ominously over the tiny country.

As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result is a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today's global political landscape.

Praise for My Promised Land

"This book will sweep you up in its narrative force and not let go of you until it is done. [Shavit's] accomplishment is so unlikely, so total . . . that it makes you believe anything is possible, even, God help us, peace in the Middle East." - Simon Schama, Financial Times

"[A] must-read book." - Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times

"Important and powerful . . . the least tendentious book about Israel I have ever read." - Leon Wieseltier, The New York Times Book Review

"Spellbinding . . . Shavit's prophetic voice carries lessons that all sides need to hear." - The Economist

"One of the most nuanced and challenging books written on Israel in years." - The Wall Street Journal

Rezension

"This book will sweep you up in its narrative force and not let go of you until it is done. [Shavit's] accomplishment is so unlikely, so total . . . that it makes you believe anything is possible, even, God help us, peace in the Middle East." - Simon Schama, Financial Times

"[A] must-read book . . . Shavit celebrates the Zionist man-made miracle - from its start-ups to its gay bars - while remaining affectionate, critical, realistic and morally anchored. . . . His book is a real contribution to changing the conversation about Israel and building a healthier relationship with it. Before their next ninety-minute phone call, both Barack and Bibi should read it." - Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times

"[An] important and powerful book . . . [Shavit] has an undoctrinaire mind. He comes not to praise or to blame, though along the way he does both, with erudition and with eloquence; he comes instead to observe and to reflect. This is the least tendentious book about Israel I have ever read. It is a Zionist book unblinkered by Zionism. It is about the entirety of the Israeli experience. Shavit is immersed in all of the history of his country. While some of it offends him, none of it is alien to him. . . . The author of My Promised Land is a dreamer with an addiction to reality. He holds out for affirmation without illusion. Shavit's book is an extended test of his own capacity to maintain his principles in full view of the brutality that surrounds them." - Leon Wieseltier, The New York Times Book Review

"Spellbinding . . . In this divided, fought-over shard of land splintered from the Middle East barely seventy years ago, Mr. Shavit's prophetic voice carries lessons that all sides need to hear." - The Economist

"One of the most nuanced and challenging books written on Israel in years . . . [The] book's real power: On an issue so prone to polemic, Mr. Shavit offers candor." - The Wall Street Journal

"A tour de force." - Jewish Journal

"Reads like a love story and a thriller at once." - Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"[A] searingly honest, descriptively lush, painful and riveting story of the creation of Zionism in Israel and [Shavit's] own personal voyage." - The Washington Post

"Shavit is a master storyteller. [His] retelling of history jars us out of our familiar retrospections, reminds us (and we do need reminders) that there are historical reasons why Israel is a country on the edge. . . . Required reading for both the left and the right." - The Jewish Week

"The most extraordinary book that I've read on [Israel] since Amos Elon's book called The Israelis, and that was published in the late sixties." - David Remnick, on Charlie Rose

" My Promised Land is an Israeli book like no other. Not since Amos Elon's The Israelis, Amos Oz's In the Land of Israel, and Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem has there been such a powerful and comprehensive book written about the Jewish State and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ari Shavit is one of Israel's leading columnists and writers, and the story he tells describes with great empathy the Palestinian tragedy and the century-long struggle between Jews and Arabs over the Holy Land. While Shavit is being brutally honest regarding the Zionist enterprise, he is also insightful, sensitive, and attentive to the dramatic life-stories of his fascinating heroes and heroines. The result is a unique nonfiction book that has the qualities of fine literature. It brings to life epic history without being a conventional history book. It deepens contemporary political understanding without being a one-sided political polemic. It is painful and provocative, yet colorful, emotional, life-loving, and inspiring. My Promised Land is the ultimate personal odyssey of a humanist exploring the startling biography of his tormented homeland, which is at the very center of global interest." - Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Israel

"With dee

Klappentext

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE ECONOMIST

Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today

Not since Thomas L. Friedman's groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land. Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Ari Shavit draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters, as well as his own family's story, illuminating the pivotal moments of the Zionist century to tell a riveting narrative that is larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and national, both deeply human and of profound historical dimension.

We meet Shavit's great-grandfather, a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people; the idealist young farmer who bought land from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s to grow the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine's booming economy; the visionary youth group leader who, in the 1940s, transformed Masada from the neglected ruins of an extremist sect into a powerful symbol for Zionism; the Palestinian who as a young man in 1948 was driven with his family from his home during the expulsion from Lydda; the immigrant orphans of Europe's Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the pragmatic engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel's nuclear program in the 1960s, in the only interview he ever gave; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; the dot-com entrepreneurs and young men and women behind Tel-Aviv's booming club scene; and today's architects of Israel's foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms ominously over the tiny country.

As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result is a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today's global political landscape.

Praise for My Promised Land

"This book will sweep you up in its narrative force and not let go of you until it is done. [Shavit's] accomplishment is so unlikely, so total . . . that it makes you believe anything is possible, even, God help us, peace in the Middle East."-Simon Schama, Financial Times

"[A] must-read book."-Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times

"Important and powerful . . . the least tendentious book about Israel I have ever read."-Leon Wieseltier, The New York Times Book Review

"Spellbinding . . . Shavit's prophetic voice carries lessons that all sides need to hear."-The Economist

"One of the most nuanced and challenging books written on Israel in years."-The Wall Street Journal

Auszüge aus dem Buch

ONE

At First Sight, 1897

On the night of April 15, 1897, a small, elegant steamer is en route from Egypt's Port Said to Jaffa. Thirty passengers are on board, twenty-one of them Zionist pilgrims who have come from London via Paris, Marseille, and Alexandria. Leading the pilgrims is the Rt. Honorable Herbert Bentwich, my great-grandfather.

Bentwich is an unusual Zionist. At the end of the nineteenth century, most Zionists are Eastern European; Bentwich is a British subject. Most Zionists are poor; he is a gentleman of independent means. Most Zionists are secular, whereas he is a believer. For most Zionists of this time, Zionism is the only choice, but my great-grandfather chooses Zionism of his own free will. In the early 1890s, Herbert Bentwich makes up his mind that the Jews must settle again in their ancient homeland, Judea.

This pilgrimage is unusual, too. It is the first such journey of upper-middle-class British Jews to the Land of Israel. This is why the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, attributes such importance to these twenty-one travelers. He expects Bentwich and his colleagues to write a comprehensive report about the Land. Herzl is especially interested in the inhabitants of Palestine and the prospects for colonizing it. He expects the report to be presented at the end of the summer to the first Zionist Congress that is to be held in Basel. But my great-grandfather is somewhat less ambitious. His Zionism, which preceded Herzl's, is essentially romantic. Yet he, too, was carried away by the English translation of Herzl's prophetic manifesto Der Judenstaat, or The State of the Jews. He personally invited Herzl to appear at his prestigious London club, and he was bowled over by the charisma of the visionary leader. Like Herzl, he believes that Jews must return to Palestine. But as the flat-bottomed steamer Oxus carves the black water of the Mediterranean, Bentwich is still an innocent. My great-grandfather does not wish to take a country and to establish a state; he wishes to face God.

I remain on deck for a moment. I want to understand why the Oxus is making its way across the sea. Who exactly is this ancestor of mine, and why has he come here?

As the twentieth century is about to begin there are more than 11 million Jews in the world, of whom nearly 7 million live in Eastern Europe, 2 million live in Central and Western Europe, and 1.5 million live in North America. Asian, North African, and Middle Eastern Jewry total less than one million.

Only in North America and Western Europe are Jews emancipated. In Russia they are persecuted. In Poland they are discriminated against. In Islamic countries they are a "protected people" living as second-class citizens. Even in the United States, France, and Britain, emancipation is merely a legality. Anti-Semitism is on the rise. In 1897, Christendom is not yet at peace with its ultimate other. Many find it difficult to address Jews as free, proud, and equal.

In the eastern parts of Europe, Jewish distress is acute. A new breed of ethnic-based anti-Semitism is superseding the old religious-based anti-Semitism. Waves of pogroms befall Jewish towns and townships in Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Romania, and Poland. Most shtetl Jews realize that there is no future for the shtetl. Hundreds of thousands sail to Ellis Island. The Jewish Diaspora experiences once again the cataclysmic phenomenon of mass migration.

Worse than the past is what the future holds. In the next half century, a third of all Jews will be murdered. Two-thirds of European Jewry will be wiped out. The worst catastrophe in the history of the Jewish people is about to occur. So as the Oxus approaches the shores of the Holy Land, the need to give Palestine to the Jews feels almost palpable. If the Jews won't disembark here, they will have no future. This emerging coastline may be their only salvation.

The